It’s been a good few days for Islamicists. In Europe, an elected MEP, Geert Wilders, has been banned from Britain by the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

He had been invited to show his anti-Islamic film ‘Fitna’ to MPs in the House of Commons. Since the ban, I’ve had the exquisite pleasure of witnessing various “British” Muslims on television welcome the ban, meanwhile hastening to add that they had not seen the film. Well, naturally.

The egregious Smith justified the ban on the grounds that Mr Wilders’ presence in Britain “would threaten community harmony and therefore, public security in the UK”. In other words, if Muslims in Britain don’t like something going on in the House of Commons, there will — according to the Home Secretary herself — be violence which will threaten the lives and welfare of British people.

So, what do British leaders do when confronted by such blackmail? Do? Why, they back down, of course! Never mind for a moment that on the London stage you can have Christ sodomised, or the Virgin Mary turned into a whore, as has happened in recent theatrical productions. How is such anti-Christian blasphemy acceptable? Because it is not insulting to Christians? Or because Christians, once insulted, do not take violently to the streets, in the way of “angry Muslims” (as the estimable Ian O’Doherty asked the other day: “is there any other kind?”).

So what would the wretched Smith creature have done to the author of the following words, had he tried to enter the United Kingdom?

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

“A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

“Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

“No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

The author of those sentiments (which were rediscovered by Mark Steyn) was none other than Winston Churchill, who penned them precisely 110 years ago, during his account of ‘The River War’ against the Mahdi, written in early 1899.

How enchanted — but perhaps not surprised — Churchill would have been to learn that a century and a decade later, western troops — including a large body of Irish soldiers — would be trying to curtail the ravages of the neo-Mahdist terrorists of the Janjaweed. Churchill had gone almost directly to the Sudan from north-west India, where he had been serving with the Malakand Field Force against Islamicist insurgents.

So in an almost sublime coincidence, we learnt this week that what is now the Malakand District of Pakistan is to introduce Sharia law as state law.

Some 30,000 sq km, and five million people, will effectively become an autonomous Islamic republic within the secular- governed state of Pakistan. This is in return for merely a 10-day ceasefire in the terrorist campaign by Pakistan’s Taliban in the Swat valley, in the course of which through an informal Taliban enforcement of Sharia law, “executions” and floggings have become commonplace.

In other words, in exchange for only a temporary ceasefire — what you might call their Sudetenland moment — Taliban have effectively taken a legal foothold in Pakistan: and no election, no police force, no popular demonstrations — (ha!) — will henceforth remove them. Thus the old despotic refrain: one-man, one-vote, one-election.

‘The Times of India’ predicts this capitulation will be replicated in other regions of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Provinces. “And then,” it notes grimly, “it’s a leap to Islamabad.”

Quite so: and Islamabad not merely has the Bomb, but it also has four flights a week to Bradford Airport, none of whose passengers seem ever to be treated in the way that Geert Wilders MEP was at Heathrow. Islamabad’s airport is (for the time being, anyway) named after Benazir Bhutto, who was, of course, murdered by al-Qa’ida/Taliban just over a year ago; and it was her husband, now president, Asif Zardari, who abjectly authorised the Malakand deal.

So who says that violence doesn’t pay? In the course of a week, Shariah law imposed on Malakand and a Christian MEP banned in Britain. Thus the irreducible ratchet-effect, with no going back, either way.

Mohamed Elmasry is an imam and a Canadian university professor. He’s somewhat of an activist on behalf of his Muslim faith, and writes occasional op-eds for the Canadian media. From time to time he has been known to butt heads with the kuffar — notably with Ezra Levant over Dr. Elmasry’s attitude towards Jews. The good doctor’s most notorious public expression of opinion occurred when he appeared on Michael Coren’s television show on Oct. 19, 2004. He asserted on camera that every adult Jew in Israel was a fair target for Palestinian terrorists. Afterwards, during the resulting controversy, he claimed that he didn’t say any such thing. When that didn’t work, he maintained that his words had been misrepresented, distorted, and taken out of context, and employed various other rationalizations and disclaimers, but to no avail. Here’s a partial transcript of the program in question: Elmasry: … and totally innocent people, obviously, is the children. But they are not innocent if they are part of a population which is total population of Israel is part of the army… From 18 on, they are part of the soldiers, even if they have civilian clothes. Coren: So if Israeli children are killed, that is a valid use of military force by Palestinians? Elmasry: No, they are not valid… Coren: So what are you saying? Elmasry: I’m saying that it has to be totally innocent, OK? Totally innocent are the children, obviously, OK? But they are not innocent if the army [inaudible] in civilian clothes, OK? Coren: What about women? Elmasry: The same, if they are women in the army… Coren: Anyone over the age of 18 in Israel is a valid target. Elmasry: Anybody above 18 is a part of the Israeli army… Coren: So everyone in Israel and anyone and everyone in Israel, irrespective of gender, over the age of 18 is a valid target? Elmasry: Yes, I would say. The pressure against him became so intense that Dr. Elmasry offered to resign as a spokesman for the Canadian Islamic Congress. But his resignation was not accepted, and he continues to speak on behalf of the group. With that in mind, here’s the Mohamed Elmasry’s latest essay, as published last week in The Georgia Straight, with my comments interpolated: The Islamophobia machine is a new growth industry By Mohamed Elmasry Just as some Jews betrayed their coreligionists by aiding the Nazi propaganda machine before and during WWII, today there are Muslims just as eagerly and effectively helping the Islamophobia industry to stereotype and marginalize their brothers and sisters of the faith. These Muslims are very much appreciated and celebrated by those who stand to benefit from the promotion of Islamophobia; in fact, they are in such demand that the hate-and-fear industry can’t find enough of them. OK, we’re off to a good start here. It’s a familiar meme: Muslims in the West face the same threat today from their host societies that Jews did in the 1930s. The Muslims are the new Jews, and the Islamophobes who object to them are the same as the Nazis. As has often been pointed out, there are holes in this argument big enough to ride a camel through. – – – – – – – – – First of all, the Jews in the 1930s were almost suicidally non-violent. They did not publicly abuse their gentile neighbors. They made no threats against the community or the state. They did not start riots or blow things up because of their religious beliefs. The anti-Semitism that was so prevalent at time owed nothing to any rational fear of Jewish violence. Secondly, in contrast to the Nazis, there is no official state-sanctioned anti-Islamic policy in the non-Muslim world. Quite the opposite, in fact: the governments of the West generally bow and scrape before Islam in an attempt to fend off more violent attacks. So the comparison is spurious and invidious, designed to invoke the sacred icon of the Holocaust and cut off any further discussion of the topic. Islamophobia has been around for quite some time, but since 9/11 it began to take on form and structure, supported by financiers, researchers, writers, and academics, many of whom were self-styled “experts” on Islam and terrorism. The Islamophobia industry directly filled a need created by right-wing politicians, war mongers, racists, lobbyists, and the military war business (from professional mercenary companies to arms dealers and manufacturers). “Financiers”, eh? So where’s my funding? If I had known they pay people to do what I do, I wouldn’t nickel-and-dime our readers to death… Every time a perceived need is revealed in a capitalist society, an industry is created, sometimes by design, to fill that need. The West led by the U.S. saw and promoted the need for an Islamophobia industry; and now that it is established, it will be around for years to come. “Sometimes by design.” Uh-huh. So the capitalists of the West saw the ragheads coming, and just couldn’t wait to create a whole new industry to market arms and other products to newly-indoctrinated Islamophobes. I don’t know what universe Prof. Elmasry inhabits, but it’s not the same one I live in. The vast majority of people in my part of the world didn’t even know what a Muslim was before 9/11. And most of those who did pay pre-9/11 attention to Islam had been jolted into awareness by the U.S.S. Cole bombing in 2000, or the African embassy bombings in 1998, or the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, or the massacre at the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, or the taking of American hostages in Iran in 1979. In other words, Americans became aware of Islam because fervent Muslim believers repeatedly directed violence at Americans. Islam kept poking at the USA until it got our attention. It’s not like we were atavistic hate-filled toothless rubes, just waiting for an excuse to go after Muslims. The “stereotype” of violent Islam owes its origin to routine Islamic terrorism. The “Islamophobia industry” was created and is maintained by repeated mass violence on the part of devout Muslims directed at non-Muslims. It’s an unhappy fact, Dr. Elmasry, but it’s true. Deal with it. There are five central reasons for this phenomenon: 1. The Muslim world is rich in resources, especially crude oil, and the West is determined not to pay fair market value for it. Capitalist financial powers would rather rob Muslims and the entire Muslim world of this valuable resource, using violence if necessary, as in the case of Iraq. This is a frequent canard, much beloved by the Left as well as by Muslim apologists. If this is true, why did the hegemonic Great Satan not simply appropriate the oil fields of Kuwait and Iraq after two very expensive wars? It would have been easy enough to do — annex the appropriate real estate, bring in the multinational oil corporations, and hire Blackwater to guard the wells and shoot any natives that come near. Why didn’t we do that? Two massively expensive wars, and we didn’t even get to keep a single lousy oil well! Some hegemons we turned out to be. And if the Iraq war was about cheap oil, why didn’t the price drop after we overthrew Saddam? Why did it keep rising right up until the real estate bubble popped and the current depression kicked in? Really, the USA isn’t very smart when it comes to carrying out its nefarious global-capitalist schemes. 2. In geopolitical terms, the Muslim world covers a strategically vital area, in which the West is determined to establish a permanent presence; military occupation is one favoured means of doing so, as in the case of Afghanistan. In geopolitical terms, the Muslim world is a worthless and fetid sandpile, not counting the oil. The Suez canal and the cashew trade from Iran — those are the only things in the region we’d be considering these days if it weren’t for the oil. 3. The Muslim world represents a huge market of close to 1.5 billion people, whose buying power is essential if the West is to succeed in controlling the one-way flow of its goods — no matter how inferior they may be, compared to those of emerging economies in Asia and the flow of accumulated Muslim capital the other way. Once again, if the West didn’t ship half its wealth to the Middle East for oil, where would the capital come from that would allow Muslims to buy our stuff? You’re contradicting yourself here, Dr. Elmasry. If we intend to sell gimcracks to the Arabs, the price of oil needs to remain high, because they have no other commodity or industry that they can use to acquire the capital. So which is it that we want — cheap oil or eager Muslim consumers? 4. The Israeli factor wields a persistently strong influence in western politics, especially the powerful American Israeli lobby in Washington. The U.S. and its allies are determined to maintain Israel as a strong military outpost in the Middle East and ensure that its anti-Muslim policies are immune from any negative judgment; hence the Israel-can-do-no-wrong bias. I’m forced yet again to wonder what planet Mohamed Elmasry lives on. For the last forty years the governments of the West have twisted Israel’s arm over and over again to force it to make concessions to the Arabs without any reciprocity. Thanks to the governments of the West, a “cease-fire in the Middle East” means “Israelis stop shooting at Arabs while the Arabs blow up as many Jews as they want”. At the grassroots level, which group organizes violent and threatening demonstrations? The anti-Muslims or the anti-Zionists? 5. The U.S.-led “war on terror”, plus the politicization of all terrorist attacks dating from 9/11 and later, translates in practical terms to a need for Islamophobes and other organizations to work together in both the public and private sphere. This has led to the enactment of anti-civil-liberty laws, Muslim profiling by authorities, the restriction of Muslim immigration to the West, and the further marginalization of Muslim minorities already established in western society. As for the scare quotes around “war on terror”, in this case I’m with Dr. Elmasry: I’d much rather my government would call a spade a spade, and refer to it as “the war on political Islam” or “the defense against the Great Jihad”. But no, we have to pussyfoot around the issue with doubletalk to protect the feelings of Muslims. Such is the political climate today. And the rest of this paragraph is nonsense. “Muslim profiling” is not only not practiced, it is actually against the law. In fact, the opposite is the case: police and other authorities engage in “anti-profiling”; that is, they investigate fewer Muslims than they might otherwise, in order to be safe from lawsuits and the wrath of the Muslim street. American law enforcement bends over backwards to make nice to Muslims. Witness this photo of FBI agents engaged in outreach with members of Jamaat ul-Fuqra: The occasion for this little confab was the 2005 American Muslim Scouts Summer Program, in which two FBI agents joined forces with the Muslims of America at the group’s national headquarters in Islamberg, near Deposit, NY. That is, four years after 9/11 not only was the FBI not profiling, it was reaching out to terrorist-affiliated organizations like MOA and CAIR. It was actively consulting with them, asking for their advice, coordinating with their members, and otherwise being solicitous of Muslims, even dangerous ones. The FBI and American law enforcement in general are bastions of political correctness. Since then the US government has issued directives that forbid the use of the words “jihad”, “Islamofascism”, and “Islamic terrorists” in its internal communications. Government functionaries are not even allowed to discuss the nature of the most pressing national security issue of our times. What this means is that if we Islamophobes are right — if Muslims really are more likely to carry out a terrorist attack than non-Muslims — then our governments’ official policies make that eventuality even more likely. We have been abandoned and traduced by our own leaders. Like other corporate entities, the Islamophobia industry has been very active in creating a public “branding” for its product and a new lingo or jargon to identify its artificially created place in our language. Thanks to the Islamophobia industry, terms like Islamist, Islamofascism, and Eurabia are commonplace. Yes, this is true. Your point? In order to draw public attention to a worthwhile cause, recognizable “brands” are a must. I’m proud to make my own occasional modest contribution to the cause, designing logos and minting phrases whenever possible, in hopes that some of them will catch on. After all, someone has to counteract Islam Means Peace™. […] The term Islamofascism became familiar after the September 2001 attacks as a way to describe any ideology based on Islam, even if it had no connection whatsoever to negative constructs. The American group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) found in its search of a major reference database that Islamofascism was mentioned just twice before 9/11; both times in the British media. In 1990, a remark by Independent writer Malise Ruthven about governments in predominantly Islamic countries stated: “Authoritarian government, not to say ‘Islamo-fascism,’ is the rule rather than the exception from Morocco to Pakistan.” Ironically, considering the term’s current usage, most of these authoritarian governments — including Morocco and Pakistan — were backed by the U.S. at the time. The second mention, also from the Independent in 1990, came in a response criticizing Ruthven for coining the term. This is all too true: because it worships at the altar of “stability”, the US government has a tendency to support Islamic dictatorships. Not only that, the United States has intervened on behalf of illiberal Muslim guerrilla groups in places like Kosovo. Like many leftists, Prof. Elmasry assumes that conservatives are all slobbering slope-browed morons who slavishly support any policy, no matter how stupid, put forth by the United States government. Nothing could be further from the truth. Conservatives railed against the foolish and misguided policies of the Bush administration and will continue to oppose them under Obama. Islamic fascism is the norm from Rabat to Jakarta, and our governments should refuse to give it support and sustenance in any form. Period. […] The word Eurabia is another volatile word, coined to create a growing fear that every good thing in Europe (culture, economy, ethnic identity, et cetera) will end as its Muslim population increases. The term motivates violence against Europe’s Muslim minorities. Meanwhile, American Islamophobes are using it to promote the idea that “you have to deal with the problem before it comes here”. FAIR also reported that “At Michigan State University, the campus chapter of Young Americans for Freedom invited a bona fide fascist — Nick Griffin, the head of the racist British National Party — to speak on how Europe is becoming ‘Eurabia’.” Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Nick Griffin indeed a fascist. Is that prima facie evidence that “Eurabia” is a misnomer? If he says that “the Nile is a river in Egypt”, does that mean it’s not true? Does the fact that Hitler was a vegetarian discredit the entire vegan movement? These days, it seems any writer — including those who have never achieved much in the way of popularity, profile or status — can get a book, op-ed, article, or editorial letter easily published through the influence of the Islamophobia industry in western publishing and media. Books on such a “hot” topic as the Islamic/Muslim “threat” are sure to be widely reviewed from coast to coast, regardless of their accuracy or quality. Yes, I noticed how easily Fjordman’s book gained traction. Not to mention how rich he became in the process… The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie was Act I. Funding Evil by Rachel Ehrenfeld was Act II. The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones was Act III. Western publishers have all gotten the message by now. Publishing books that “insult Islam” can be unprofitable, expensive, and even life-threatening. If they are not already established best-sellers, authors who wish to publish Counterjihad books can either self-publish or forget the idea. Visit a Barnes and Noble or Borders and look at the books about Islam. If you care to take the time, add up the numbers of pro-Islamic and anti-Islamic titles. The last time I did so —in the airport in Toronto last fall — the gushing pro-Islam books outnumbered the anti-Islam books by at least ten to one. The press is engaged in an organized whitewash on behalf of the Religion of Peace. Mohamed Elmasry has written pernicious nonsense here. Every word that he writes — and that includes “a”, “an”, and “the” — is a classic example of taqiyya. The Islamophobia machine is in pitiful shape. It’s out of gas and has four flat tires and a blown head gasket. Compared to the streamlined modern jihad machine, it’s a real junker.

The speaker demanded that their supremacist ideology needed to be accommodated by the government, and called for a “new era.” The speaker said that his people must be allowed to have laws in place to support this supremacist ideology. Perhaps you think I am referencing the grim situation for human rights in Pakistan, where the Taliban’s push for implementing Islamic supremacist Sharia law in northwest Pakistan has succeeded in obtaining surrender by the Pakistan government on this. The result is that the people in that part of Pakistan will soon be ruled by an Islamic supremacist ideology with its own outlook, its own Sharia laws, and its own Islamic supremacist version of “justice.” Perhaps you think I am remarking on the statements reported on February 18, 2009 in Pakistan by Islamic supremacist Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM) chief Maulana Sufi Mohammad who attacked democracy stating, “From the very beginning, I have viewed democracy as a system imposed on us by the infidels. Islam does not allow democracy or elections… I believe the Taliban government formed a complete Islamic state, which was an ideal example for other Muslim countries. Had this government remained intact, it could have led to the establishment of similar Islamic governments in many other countries.” This is the same Sufi Mohammad who told news reporters that “democracy is against the teachings of the Holy Quran and Sunnah” and that he “regarded democracy a system of Kufr (unbelief).” In fact, I am referring to both of these. But I am also referring to another man, at another time, and in another place – who echoed very similar sentiments. It was February 18, 1939 – seventy years ago – with another supremacist group. Then it was in Czechoslovakia with a Dr. Kundt stating that he represented Germans with his National Socialist party beliefs of Aryan supremacism. You may remember them as the “Nazis.” Seventy years ago, Dr. Kundt also demanded separate laws defying equality and liberty for his Nazi supremacist group, stating: “Germans must be allowed their own Nazi outlook, their own Nazi laws, their own Nazi habits, and their own Nazi justice. It is high time that these things were done. History does not wait. We, however, march on with the history of the new era, for our leader is Adolf Hitler. His will and his ‘Weltanschauung’ (philosophy) will from today dictate all the plans and arrangements of this house in Prague and will dictate every activity of the Urania.” History would later show the atrocities and evil wrought by allowing such supremacism to grow unchecked. Nazism was a supremacist ideology that sought the destruction of all those who would defy it, sought a “final solution” for Jews, posed a transnational threat, and sought to conquer the world. Sound familiar? The similarities between 1939 and 2009 continue to grow daily. The muted reaction by many of our government leaders to the latest growth of Islamic supremacism in the nuclear weapon-armed nation of Pakistan mirrors such tenacious denial by these leaders on Islamic supremacism in America and around the world. Their sickening silence is only exacerbated by their few public statements that demonstrate a shocking ignorance towards human rights and an outrageous contempt for the inalienable human rights of equality and liberty. In response to the Pakistan surrender to the Islamic supremacist Taliban’s demands for implementation of Sharia law in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has merely stated that she wants to see the Pakistan government’s “intention and the actual agreed-upon language.” Mrs. Clinton wants us to believe that she is unaware of the Islamic supremacist Sharia law’s intention to suppress the equality and liberty of women, men, and children in Pakistan and around the world. She wants us to believe she doesn’t know about the UN report on growing global Muslim violence against women. She wants us to believe she doesn’t know about how the Taliban has used Islamic supremacist Sharia law to justify threatening, murdering, and dumping the bodies of women in Pakistan. She wants us to believe she doesn’t know about the million pregnant women abused in Pakistan every year, or the news media reports of nearly 8,000 cases of abuses against women, including Islamic supremacist “honor killings,” in Pakistan in 2008. Just like we are supposed to believe that she is unaware of the Muslim women beaten and murdered in her state of New York — one last week who was beheaded by her husband, the CEO of Bridges TV, whose mission was to “promote moderate Islam.” While Mrs. Clinton may want us to believe that she is unaware of all these world events as America’s Secretary of State, in fact, we know better. So does she. As U.S. Senator representing New York, she was a co-sponsor on Senate Resolution 711 condemning the death of a 13 year old girl in Somalia last October. The girl was stoned to death for her “crime” of being a rape victim. She was stoned to death by Somalian Islamic supremacists following Sharia law, stating “We will do what Allah has instructed us,” while 1,000 looked on and watched. This is the same Islamic supremacist Sharia law that Pakistan’s surrender will allow to be imposed on helpless women and children in Pakistan. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also wants us to suspend our disbelief as she speaks to Muslim leaders in Indonesia as a fellow “democracy,” whose citizens openly call for Islamic jihad on other nations, publicly promote and distribute Islamic supremacist literature and books, hold massive public rallies denouncing democracy that call for the creation of a global Islamic supremacist caliphate, and whose Islamic supremacists behead Christian girls. She is meeting with Indonesia’s so-called “democratic” leaders who deny the existence of the Islamic supremacist terror group Jemaah Islamiyah in their nation, and who seek to promote Islamic supremacist finance. She also expects us to ignore the growth of Islamic supremacist Sharia law throughout Indonesia, and the continuing reports of Indonesian oppression of religious minorities in that “democracy.” Perhaps Mrs. Clinton forgot that democratic nations have democratic values, including honoring equality and liberty. While Mrs. Clinton claims in Indonesia that “Islam, democracy and modernity cannot only coexist but thrive together,” Pakistan’s advocate for Sharia law, Islamic supremacist Maulana Sufi Mohammad condemns democracy as un-Islamic and only for the infidel. But Mrs. Clinton and her State Department have “no comment” on the growth of Islamic supremacist Sharia law in Pakistan or on the attacks on democracy by Pakistan Sharia law advocate Maulana Sufi Mohammad. At least, those were the initial comments by Mrs. Clinton’s State Department representative, Gordon Duguid. But then Gordon Duguid decided to defend Pakistan’s surrender to the Islamic supremacist Taliban, stating: “The Islamic law is within the constitutional framework of Pakistan… I don’t know that is particularly an issue for anyone outside of Pakistan to discuss.” Do Islamic supremacists merely seek imposition of Sharia law only in Pakistan, Somalia, and Indonesia? Islamic supremacists seek to conquer the entire Earth to submit to their supremacism – Asia, Africa, Europe, the United Kingdom, and North America. As the Pakistan Daily Times reports, Maulana Sufi Mohammad’s goals for implementing Islamic supremacist Sharia are nothing less than seeking “supremacy of Islam over the entire world.” But the U.S. State Department has “no comment” on this, nor do they think it is “an issue for anyone outside of Pakistan to discuss.” Hillary Clinton’s State Department is continuing a craven position of “hear no evil, see no evil” regarding Islamic supremacism that is becoming entrenched within appeasers among foreign policy cliques in Washington DC. This community of the blind and deaf are the same amoral individuals that have included Obama campaign foreign policy advisor Dennis Ross, who was part of the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project that called for negotiations with the Islamic supremacist Muslim Brotherhood back in September 2008. The most disturbing report is by the Daily Telegraph and it states that the “US privately backs Pakistan’s ‘Sharia law for peace’ deal with Taliban.” The report quotes anonymous “American officials in Islamabad” that view Pakistan surrender to the Taliban on Islamic supremacist Sharia law in Pakistan’s northwest as a possible tactic to “divide” members within the Taliban. The report also states that alleged U.S. support for the Pakistan surrender of human dignity and rights to Islamic supremacism “reflected the ‘smart power’ thinking outlined by Hillary Clinton.” We can only hope that amoral tacticians are not consciously empowering Islamic supremacists with the delusion that sacrificing the helpless in Pakistan will satisfy Islamic supremacists’ goals for world domination. Does America’s State Department think that appeasing Islamic supremacists will yield “peace in our time”? Are American politicians so historically ignorant that they believe a policy of appeasement is “smart power”? Whether such inaction on Islamic supremacism is due to amorality, ignorance, or blindness – the responsibility does not change. Pretending to be blind and deaf about Islamic supremacism does not excuse their responsibility for its appeasement – any more than being blind and deaf about the Aryan supremacist Nazis in 1939 ended responsibility for its appeasement then. History shows the consequences of those failures. This is the same U.S. government leadership whose president is the greatest beneficiary of America’s defiance against supremacism in history, who took his presidential vows on Lincoln’s Bible, and who spoke at Lincoln’s memorial – mere steps away from the words hammered in marble that “all men are created equal.” Does his government now view that equality and liberty are not a sufficient priority to defy Islamic supremacism? If President Barack Obama and his cabinet are responsible for equality and liberty, then it is time for them to wake up to the threat of Islamic supremacism. Right now. It is 2009… the 1939 of our generation and it is time to confront Islamic supremacism as its cancer grows around the world, and as shown by the recent “Homegrown Jihad” video – in camps around the United States. Will a future generation look back on the craven positions by today’s leaders on Islamic supremacism like we do today on those who denied the threat of Nazism’s Aryan supremacism in 1939? Instead of saying “it is just like 1939,” will they say instead “it is just like 2009”? That is a legacy that our generation must prevent, and a future that we must take control of… before it takes control of us. The 3 AM telephone call is ringing tonight in Washington DC. Will neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton pick up the telephone and wake up — as equality and liberty itself are imperiled around the world? The emergency call on the threat to equality and liberty must be answered – by our government leaders – and by each of us as free men and women. We must heed the call – right now – no matter how inconvenient, no matter how tired we are, and no matter how frightening the responsibility is. That is what it means to be responsible for equality and liberty. That is what it means to be the home of the brave. We have received the call to action as free people to be responsible for equality and liberty by defying Islamic supremacism in America and around the world. Now it is time for us to act to get the message out to our fellow Americans and our leaders. It is our judgment, our courage, and our wisdom today that we must prove in defending equality and liberty, and to show that… We Fear No Evil.

Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal calls for liberals and conservatives to defend Geert Wilders and freedom of speech. The WSJ has not always been this understanding of what is at stake in the Wilders case — this piece is a welcome departure from the paper’s previous stance. Still, this Stephens piece is thoroughly wrongheaded in several ways, and the WSJ has more ground to cover to be consistent in its defense of free speech: explanations below.

“Geert Wilders Is a Test for Western Civilization: If Rushdie should be defended, why not the Dutch pol?,” by Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal, February 17 (thanks to Mackie):

Twenty years ago, Andres Serrano put a plastic crucifix in a glass of urine, photographed it and called it art. Conservatives in particular weren’t pleased: not with Mr. Serrano, not with his picture, and not with the National Endowment for the Arts, which had forked over $15,000 in taxpayer money to support this uretic gesture.Also 20 years ago: On Valentine’s Day, 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, condemning him to death for supposedly blaspheming Islam in his novel, “The Satanic Verses.” Iran later upped the ante by severing diplomatic ties with Britain and putting a bounty on Mr. Rushdie’s head. The fatwa remains in effect today by order of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.

These twin anniversaries come to mind following the British government’s decision last week to ban Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders from British soil as an “undesirable person.” Mr. Wilders is also being prosecuted for hate speech in his native Holland, where he faces up to 16 months in prison if convicted. His alleged crime involves making a short film called “Fitna,” which draws a straight line between Quranic verses and acts of Islamist terror. Mr. Wilders has also called for banning the Quran, which he labels a “fascist book” on a par with Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

Here again: as Fitna itself shows, it is not Wilders who “draws a straight line between Quranic verses and acts of Islamist terror,” it is the jihad terrorists themselves. This crucial and all-important distinction continues, for some reason, to elude most commentators.

Whatever else might be said about Mr. Wilders’s travel ban and prosecution, it helps put into context the events of 1989. In the case of Mr. Serrano, liberal Americans went into a lather about defending his rights to artistic expression and freedom of speech against the parochial leaders of the religious right, men like Jesse Helms and Pat Robertson. Never mind that the worst of their threats involved withholding public funding; fundamental things were said to be at stake.As for the Rushdie affair, after some initial hesitation most of the liberal intelligentsia on both sides of the Atlantic rallied to his cause. True, there were some dissenters: Jimmy Carter called “The Satanic Verses” a “direct insult to those millions of Muslims whose sacred beliefs have been violated” while feminist Germaine Greer declared that she “[refused] to sign petitions for that book, which was about his own troubles.”

On the whole, however, the West held firm. A joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of the European Community insisted that “fundamental principles are at stake,” adding that they “remain fully committed to the principles of freedom of thought and expression within their territories.”

Fast forward to Mr. Wilders’s situation and what’s remarkable is that his most serious detractors — those that aren’t themselves Islamists or spokesmen for supposedly mainstream Muslim organizations — tend to fall to the political left. In Holland, leaders of both the Socialist and Labor parties support the prosecution. In Britain, it’s the Labour government of Gordon Brown that has enforced the travel ban. In Germany, the leftish Der Spiegel calls Mr. Wilders “pushy” and accuses him of making “hate-filled tirades.” Elsewhere he is described as a “racist,” an “Islamophobe,” and so on.

There is actually nothing remarkable about this at all. Jimmy Carter and Germaine Greer certainly can’t be said to be on the Right in any sense — and Stephens correctly pointed out above that they were among those who would not defend Rushdie’s freedom of speech against the mullahs. Fundamental principles are indeed at stake, and the Left is once again, as it did in the Rushdie affair, showing that it is no friend of free speech.

For his part, Mr. Wilders says he hates Islam as an ideology, not Muslims as individuals, and categorically parts company with the neo-fascist European right typified by the late Jörg Haider. He has also traveled extensively in the Middle East; even Der Spiegel admits “he is not a dull racist and xenophobe.”But irrespective of Mr. Wilders’s politics — and I wouldn’t be the first to point out that his calls to ban the Quran square oddly with his sense of himself as a champion of free speech — his travails are no less significant than Mr. Rushdie’s. And they present a test for both liberals and conservatives.

As explained previously at this site, there is no inconsistency at all in Wilders’s statements about banning the Qur’an. His call for such a ban was actually a call for consistency in the application of Dutch laws that restrict speech that incites to violence, but which have never been applied to the Qur’an or to the hate-filled imams who preach jihad and Islamic supremacism in obedience to Qur’anic dictates.

But Stephens is quite correct that the Wilders case is a test for both liberals and conservatives, and so far both are largely failing.

For liberals, the issue is straightforward. If routine mockery of Christianity and abuse of its symbols, both in the U.S. and Europe, is protected speech, why shouldn’t the same standard apply to the mockery of Islam?

Excellent question.

And if the difference in these cases is that mockery of Islam has the tendency to lead to riots, death threats and murder, should committed Christians now seek a kind of parity with Islamists by resorting to violent tactics to express their sense of religious injury?

This question manifests Stephens’ ignorance of or unwillingness to face the difference in the fundamental teachings of Christianity and Islam, and also displays the moral equivalence that remains so fashionable among the intelligentsia. It’s possible, of course, that some Christians might resort to violence, just as it is possible that any group in certain circumstances might resort to violence. But the question itself seems to arise from an assumption that jihadists resort to violence solely as a tactic, because they know it is effective, not as a matter of conviction — and so others will see that it is effective and resort to it as well. This assumption completely ignores the moral imperatives involved on both sides: the Muslims who commit violence in such contexts can and do point to numerous passages in the Qur’an and Sunnah to justify violence against unbelievers and blasphemers; Christians (despite common and false claims that the Old Testament contains open-ended and universal mandates to wage war against unbelievers) cannot find any justification in their core religious texts and teachings for such violence. Thus while violent Muslims will find such violence morally justified according to their lights, violent Christians will have a much harder time finding such justification.

This to a great degree accounts for the fact that we see so much violence committed by Muslims in the name of Islam, and so little by Christians in the name of Christianity (even historically, the Crusades were not based on core Christian teachings, but on political calculation) — but it is the 800-pound gorilla in the room that Stephens and others have not yet deigned to notice.

The notion that liberals can have it both ways — champions of free speech on the one hand; defenders of multiculturalism’s assorted sensitivities on the other — was always intellectually flimsy. If liberals now want to speak for the “right” of this or that group not to be offended, the least they can do is stop calling themselves “liberals.”

I don’t care what they call themselves, but I do care about consistency, and share Stephens’ view that they should be consistent.

For conservatives, especially of the cultural kind — the kind of people who talk about defending Western Civ. — Mr. Wilders’s case should also provoke some reconsiderations. It may not be impossible to denounce the likes of Mr. Serrano while defending the likes of Mr. Wilders. But a defense of Mr. Wilders is made a lot easier if one can point to the vivid difference between a civilization that protects, even celebrates (and funds!), its cultural provocateurs and a civilization that seeks their murder.

Nonsense. Arrant nonsense. It is perfectly possible to denounce the likes of Mr. Serrano and defend the likes of Mr. Wilders. The differences are these: I detest Serrano’s work. Do I believe it should be outlawed? I do not. Do I believe it should receive taxpayer funding? I do not. Do I believe Serrano should be killed? No. Fined? No. Imprisoned? No. Now: I support Wilders’s work, and recognize that others view it the way I view Serrano’s, although I do not accept the comparison. Should they be working to outlaw Wilders’s work and have him fined, imprisoned, or killed? No.

Get the difference? Free speech in both cases. The offended have no right to tyrannize the offenders.

This is no small point. Western civilization is not simply the “Judeo-Christian tradition.” It is also the civilization of Socrates and Aristophanes, Hume and Voltaire, Copernicus and Darwin; of religious schismatics and nonbelievers. This is the civilization that is now required to define itself, oddly enough, by the case of a flamboyant Dutch politician with inconsistent ideas and a bouffant hairdo. If he can’t be defended, neither can Mr. Rushdie. Or Mr. Serrano. Liberals and conservatives alike, take note.

True, with the exception that his sneering and inaccurate dismissal of Wilders should be noted and repudiated by all genuine defenders of free speech.

By Bat YeorBritain has just witnessed the spectacle of a duly elected parliamentarian from another EU country, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, being denied entry to the country because he constituted “a threat to public policy.” Wilders, after being detained briefly at Heathrow, was sent back to Holland — where he has further legal troubles. Three weeks earlier, a Dutch appeals court had ordered prosecutors to begin criminal proceedings against Wilders for “inciting hatred and discrimination” and “insulting Muslim worshippers” through his public statements and his 2008 film, Fitna. The order to proceed with the criminal prosecution resulted from pressure put on European states and on the UN Human Rights Council by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The OIC’s aim is to punish and suppress any alleged Islamophobia, around the world but particularly in Europe, and it has been a leader in creating the conditions that made the U.K.’s Wilders ban possible.

The OIC is one of the largest intergovernmental organizations in the world. It encompasses 56 Muslim states plus the Palestinian Authority. Spread over four continents, it claims to speak in the name of the ummah (the universal Muslim community), which numbers about 1.3 billion. The OIC’s mission is to unite all Muslims worldwide by rooting them in the Koran and the Sunnah — the core of traditional Islamic civilization and values. It aims at strengthening solidarity and cooperation among all its members, in order to protect the interests of Muslims everywhere and to galvanize the ummah into a unified body.

The OIC is a unique organization — one that has no equivalent in the world. It unites the religious, economic, military, and political strength of 56 states. By contrast, the European Union represents half as many states and is a secular body only, and the Vatican — which speaks for the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics — is devoid of any political power. Many Muslims in the West resist the OIC’s tutelage and oppose its efforts to supplant Western law with sharia. But the OIC’s resources are formidable.

The organization has numerous subsidiary institutions collaborating at the highest levels with international organizations in order to implement its political objectives worldwide. Its main working bodies are the Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (ISESCO), which seeks to impose on the West the Islamic perception of history and civilization; the Observatory of Islamophobia, which puts pressure on Western governments and international bodies to adopt laws punishing “Islamophobia” and blasphemy; and the newly created Islamic International Court of Justice. As stated in its 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, the OIC is strictly tied to the principles of the Koran, the Sunnah, and the sharia. In a word, the OIC seeks to become the reincarnation of the Caliphate.

The OIC regularly reiterates its commitments to protecting the political, historical, religious, and human rights of Muslims in non-OIC states, especially Muslims who form the majority in specific regions of non-Muslim countries — such as the southern Philippines, southern Thailand, and western Thrace in Greece — as well as Muslims in places like the Balkans, the Caucasus, Myanmar, India, and China. The OIC supports Hamas and the Palestinians in their struggle to destroy Israel, as well as the Muslim fight for “legitimate self-determination” in “Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.” It has condemned the “continual Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan,” and it expresses its full solidarity with “the just cause of the Muslim Turkish people of Cyprus” and with Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, whom many hold responsible for encouraging the massacres in Darfur. The seat of the OIC is in Jeddah, but the organization regards that location as temporary: Its headquarters will be transferred to al-Kods (Islamized Jerusalem) when that city has been “liberated” from Israeli control.

In its efforts to defend the “true image” of Islam and combat its defamation, the organization has requested the UN and the Western countries to punish “Islamophobia” and blasphemy. Among the manifestations of Islamophobia, in the OIC’s view, are European opposition to illegal immigration, anti-terrorist measures, criticism of multiculturalism, and indeed any efforts to defend Western cultural and national identities. The OIC has massive funding from oil sources, which it lavishly spends on the Western media and academia and in countless “dialogues.” It influences Western policy, laws, and even textbooks through pressures brought by Muslim immigrants and by the Western nations’ own leftist parties. Hence, we have seen Kristallnacht-like incitements of hate and murder against European Jews and Israel conducted with impunity in the cities of Europe — where respect for human rights is supposed to be one of the highest values.

Geert Wilders is the latest victim of this enormous world machinery. His crime is maintaining that Europe’s civilization is rooted in the values of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and the Enlightenment — and not in Mecca, Baghdad, Andalusia, and al-Kods. He fights for Europe’s independence from the Caliphate and for its endangered freedoms. He had received serious death threats even before Fitna was released.

Many Muslims in the West support him, but Geert Wilders’s principal weapons are his courage and his willingness to resist even his own government, which is slowly submitting to the OIC’s pressures. Wilders’s enemies pretend that he is an insignificant personality who makes “provocative” statements only in search of fame. In fact, if his motivation were self-interest, he could do far better by courting the OIC’s favors — as so many Europeans are doing, consciously or unconsciously — rather than risking his freedom and indeed his life.

The Left is only too happy to suppress free speech. It doesn’t know what it’s getting itself into
By Lars Hedegaard

One thing in particular struck me last week when I was in London for the showing of Geert Wilders’ Fitna in the House of Lords. Well, apart from the fact that Mr. Wilders was banned from entering the country.

It was the press’ uniform designation of the Dutch politician as “right-wing” or even “extreme right-wing”.

What precisely has Geert Wilders done or said that makes him deserving of this epithet? For make no mistake: whereas “left-wing” is considered an accolade and smacks of loving kindness towards green forests, stray dogs in need of a warm place to sleep and undernourished children in Africa, “right-wing” denotes a misanthrope who hates all good people and will eat innocent babies for breakfast.

If one has committed the ultimate sin of criticizing religion, particularly if it is murderous and retrograde, there is no way to wash off the brand of Cain. Politically you may be a socialist, a liberal or a conservative. You may be a staunch supporter of the welfare state, socialized medicine, gay marriage, preferential treatment of women and 75 percent taxation of all private income. It won’t help you if you have distanced yourself from the teachings of the prophet.

This is curious. Irreverent criticism of religion used to be a specialty of the Left. Today such criticism proves that one is a semi-fascist to be shunned in polite company.

The forgotten prophet

There are still a few grizzled post-socialists around that will remember what their old prophet, Karl Marx, had to say about religion in the very first sentence of his Contribution to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right from 1843: “… criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism”.

Criticism of religion is not only the starting point of all criticism. It is the prerequisite of any kind of criticism. In a society where religion cannot be criticized, everything becomes religion ¬¬– from the length of your beard to what hand to use when wiping your backside.

Where there is no criticism of religion, life and society in their entirety become religious and the littleest squeak against the existing order is eo ipso an act of blasphemy to be rooted out by cutting off the offender’s head.

The courage to blaspheme is consequently the sine qua non of civilization and of social, intellectual and scientific progress. It is also the premise of the separation between church and state, as Jesus Christ was well aware of.

But what passes for the Left these days has long since given up on socialism’s founding fathers – particularly when they were right – and is groveling at the feet of a bloodthirsty moon-god from far Araby.

We know what has happened. But how and why did it come about?

A new worldview

We know that the broad Left – which in Europe would include various shades of the hard, Communist or Marxist Left, the New Left, which has now transformed itself into tree huggers, and the traditional Social Democratic parties – has vacated its traditional ideological positions in order to preach ideologies that used to be hallmarks of the far right. Positions such as the need for censorship, kissing up to demands that “religions” (i.e. Islam) must not be criticized or ridiculed, the institution of ethnic or tribal special privileges and inequality before the law – depending on what ethnic, tribal or clan chief or holy man can ingratiate himself to the top of the totem pole as most aggrieved victim.

This new weltanschauung takes us back to a legal order – or rather lack of order – the like of which we haven’t seen in the civilized world since – when? The democratic revolutions of the 19th century, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, England’s Glorious Revolution, John Milton’s Areopagitica, Magna Carta?

Take your pick. Any one of the above is true.

The road chosen by the parties on the Left permits no return. Having alienated – not to say discarded – large chunks of their traditional working class voters, they are now increasingly dependent on the Muslim vote, which they hope will guarantee them a perpetual foothold at least in the major populations centers.

Goodbye to the welfare state

In the process the Left has also undermined its signal creation, the modern welfare state.

In a remarkable report from 2008, Denmark’s National Bank (the equivalent of the Bank of England or the Federal Reserve) writes:

“A major part of the immigration into Denmark over the past 15-20 years, particularly at the beginning of the period, has come from less developed countries and has consisted of people with a low participation in the labor market causing a relatively large drag on public welfare expenditures. This has lead to a deterioration of the public finances, i.e. it has aggravated the problem of sustainability.

If immigration is to support the financing of the public sector, it must be in the shape of so-called “super immigration”. This concept covers a person who does not immigrate until he has completed his education, who is immediately employable and has an employment frequency of 100 per cent, pays taxes like a Dane, does not bring along his family and leaves the country before he reaches pension age.”

A tall order indeed and one that has never been filled by the sort of immigrants Denmark has been attracting.

Yet the Left has no answer to offer except for more immigration and lamentations over the oppression of Muslims combined with a loving understanding of their need for “respect” and special treatment.

Of course, many – if not most – of the non-socialist parties have been equally eager to embrace mass immigration of non-integratable masses from the third world. But they haven’t really been that wedded to the cradle-to-grave welfare state – at least not in the beginning.

In fact, when we look at such countries as Germany, Holland, England, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, it was private enterprise that started importing cheap and unskilled labor from the rural populations of Bangla Desh, Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco and other such places to fill the gaps along the assembly lines. At that time – in the late sixties and seventies – many spokesmen for the labor unions and the socialist parties were critical of this unwelcome competition that threatened to drive down wages and undermine hard-fought labor rights.

That was when the old industrial society was on its hind legs, soon to be replaced by the knowledge society, in which many of the new immigrants were simply unemployable. Yet they were allowed to stay on, bring in their large families and collect welfare.

The new proletariat

With the fundamental shift from industrial to knowledge society it also became clear that socialism in the shape of the nationalization of the means of production was no longer achievable. The traditional working class was disappearing and the downtrodden masses, which the Marxists had identified as the “revolutionary subject”, became too bourgeois for comfort. They left the socialist parties in droves and began voting for center-right parties that promised them a share of the wealth created by private enterprise. A house, a car, a color tv and such. In other words the kind of amenities that the leftist intelligentsia had come to consider as indispensable for its own lifestyle.

This presented the socialist ideologues with a major problem. From their reading of Lenin, Trotsky and Gramsci they knew that they were destined to remain the vanguard of the masses. The proletariat was unable to reach the required level of political consciousness without the constant goading of their far-sighted betters.

Socialism was no longer in the cards. Still the socialist intelligentsia was unwilling to let go of its claim to power. So it had to find a new revolutionary subject – a class of people that would never allow itself to be bought off by the allure of a bourgeois life but was guaranteed to remain at the edge of society.

And they found the Muslim immigrants. This socialist-Muslim nexus turned out to be a marriage made in heaven. The swelling ranks of the Muslim immigrants could deliver the votes to fill the void left by the disappearing native working classes, and the socialist parties could reciprocate by delivering welfare benefits, cultural concessions and free immigration to their to non-working Muslim charges.

The tiger’s tail

This well-functioning political arrangement, however, is on the verge of making the welfare state unsustainable. It is crumbling all over Europe, but there is no way back for the Left. There is no option but to cling ever tighter to the tiger’s tail. Otherwise the beast will turn around and bite them. We have already seen intifadas in England, France, Denmark and Norway. If the “youths” don’t have their way, they will burn the town down, smash up the cars and brutalize the indigenous population.

To keep this bizarre road show running, it has become necessary for the leftist rulers to crush free speech. However much they may privately deplore it, there is nothing else to do if they want to retain the Muslim vote that keeps them in power.

A poll conducted by the official Statistics Denmark and published on February 10, 2009, shows that 50 percent of the Muslim immigrants and their descendants want to make attacks on religion a criminal offense. 36 percent of the immigrants and 40 percent of their descendants disagree.

The corresponding figures for ethnic Danes are 79 percent against and only 15 percent in favor.

The next step ¬– a head-on attack on democracy itself – is in the works. Throughout Europe we are already seeing arrests and convictions of “right-wing” agitators who refuse to laud the multicultural state as the epitome of social virtue.

Further down this slope there may be bans on political parties that threaten to rally significant numbers of the non-Muslim

population.

The economy strikes back

There is, however, one fact of life that our power holders have left out of their political equation. That is – as Bill Clinton has so aptly expressed it – the economy, stupid.

In the near future the economy will strike back. Censorship and persecution of the unruly will not save the welfare state. How will the native populations react when they find out that their kids are not being educated, that they are not receiving adequate treatment in the hospitals, that their pensions and other welfare benefits are dwindling and that they cannot rely on the police to protect them? In a situation where they cannot themselves pay for such services because the state continues to suck up most of their income?

That is the question.

An equally intriguing question is how the captains of private enterprises and their investors will react when they realize that capitalism is incompatible with sharia law. Free enterprise cannot flourish in a society where there is no security of property rights and where there are no courts to enforce contracts.

And that is precisely the problem inherent in the likely spread of sharia courts and “sharia financing”.

If you are an infidel who happens to have done business with a true believer, the sharia court is duty bound to find against you because sharia law is based on the inequality of Muslims and non-Muslims. It is even worse if you happen to be an infidel businesswoman.

Perhaps it is time that the business community, which has so far preferred to stay aloof, starts paying attention to the real world.